Books like Pointe by Brandy Colbert

The Hate U Give tracks 16‑year‑old Starr Carter, a Black teenager from a poor Bronx neighborhood who attends an elite private school, as she confronts police violence, social media battles, and community turmoil after witnessing her friend’s shooting.

Ari, a fifteen‑year‑old Mexican‑American with a brother in prison, meets Dante and a friendship sparks that forces him to confront his identity, family, and sexuality.

Cameron Post, a gay teen from a conservative Montana ranch town, is sent to a conversion therapy center after her family demands she change her sexual orientation.

Valley’s senior year is shattered after a violent school shooting tied to a hateful list she helped create. Haunted by guilt and family drama, she strives to heal and make amends while navigating friendships and the victim she saved.

In Harlem, Xiomara Batista learns to use her voice and verse to fight for herself and her dreams, turning lyrical poetry into her most powerful tool.

A half‑Persian teenager struggling with depression finds belonging in Iran when a new friend shows him what it means to be truly understood.

A first‑person diary of fourteen‑year‑old Dawn Rae Johnson as she confronts racism while attending the first integrated school in her Virginia town after Brown v. Board.

Sixteen‑year‑old photographer Tessa awakens from a two‑year suspension after her best friend is kidnapped, and the two teens and their high school community must confront the emotional fallout of the ordeal.

Seventeen‑year‑old Clare dreams of the City Ballet Company; for a decade she has disciplined herself in hope of a spot, guided by her grandfather’s encouragement, while poems capture the highs and doubts of pursuing a dancer’s life.

Drew Lawson, a Harlem junior high basketball star whose grades lag, must grapple with a new coaching strategy that threatens his team's success and his own college prospects, forcing him to prove his true talent on the court.

The emotional turmoil of a teenage girl forced to keep a horrific secret keeps her isolated from friends and herself, while she obsesses about weight loss and longs for friendship with her boyfriend, Corey 'The Living Stoner', who leads a double life as a stoner and a vegetarian vegan.

A socially awkward teenager who has endured trauma and a parental divorce moves to a new high school, where he uses diary entries to confront and reinvent himself amid complex family dynamics and adolescent relationships.

Three teenage girls from a sleepy town board a borrowed station wagon for a road trip that turns into an unexpected adventure of friendship, secrets, and self‑discovery.

In Frannie’s elementary school, a new boy—known as Jesus Boy—holds the key to seeing her world differently, inspiring her to rethink family, faith, and friendship.

When her dream of ballet falls away, 17‑year‑old Harper Scott becomes a research assistant at McMurdo, the U.S. Antarctic station, where she discovers new possibilities for her future.

Fourteen‑year‑old Sam Walsh returns home after three years in a kidnapper’s custody, forcing his sister Beth and friend Josh to confront survivor guilt, memories of the abduction, and Sam’s struggle to readjust to normal life.

When Payton learns her father has multiple sclerosis, she confronts family struggles, school counseling, a new romance in biology, and the hope of bike riding, learning to accept life’s uncertainties.

Like everyone else in the Panopticon, 15-year-old Anais Hendricks has been in and out of foster care practically since birth. "[B]orn in a nuthouse to nobody that was ever seen again," she had her only successful foster placement with a prostitute later stabbed to death (Anais found the body). She's been sent to this facility, where the inmates are under constant surveillance, because she had a bad history with a policewoman who has been bludgeoned into a coma, and Anais--almost permanently whacked on whatever drug she can lay her hands on--can't explain why she has blood on her skirt. Amid the institution's crescent-shaped buildings and all-seeing watchtower, Anais befriends a group of ragtag ruffians and delves into her past, endlessly stoned and concerned she's being watched by an entity she calls "the experiment."

After being cut from her ballet program, Zoe learns that her best friend Olivia’s life‑threatening illness is the greatest challenge of all.